This is Dave Edstrom's personal blog called Photons and Electrons. This blog is about technology, as well as some of my personal interests. I am the CEO/CTO of Virtual Photons Electrons. I was the CTO for MEMEX for three years, the President and Chairman of the Board for the MTConnect Institute from May 2010 to January 2014 and prior to that I spent 23 years at Sun Microsystems.

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

I watched the excellent movie Becoming Warren Buffetton HBO. If you have never read a biography on Warren Buffet, this is well worth watching. If you don't fall in love with Warren Buffett, you must not have a heart :-)

I love Warren Buffett's quotes and one of my favorites is: "Bulls and bears do fine and hogs get slaughtered." Which means, have a plan.

He also restates classics such as:"The Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken."

"Greenfield — a family friend of the Gateses — was cruising through Seattle with Katharine "Kay" Graham, the Post publisher who presided over Watergate, and Buffett was along for the ride since he was BFFs with Graham and Berkshire Hathaway held a stake in the Post.

The plan was to hang out with Bill Gates Sr., his wife Mary, and that software mogul son of theirs, Bill Gates.

Buffett was nonplussed.

"While we're driving down there, I said, 'What the hell are we going to spend all day doing with these people? How long do we have to stay to be polite?" he tells the Financial Times.

But Gates was excited about meeting Graham — he was intrigued by the Post and its history.

Resigned to his fate, Gate said that he would stay for a few hours to chat with his elders, and then he'd helicopter back to the Microsoft headquarters to crush it at the office.

Then Graham, Greenfield, and Buffett arrived.

After a few introductions, Buffett and Gates started talking about the changes in the newspaper business. Then Buffett started asking Gates about his industry.

"If you were building IBM from scratch, how would it look different?" he asked. "What are the growth businesses for IBM? What has changed for them?"

Then Gates told Buffett to buy two stocks: Intel and Microsoft.

They were immersed in conversation. The bromance was blooming.

In recalling that first meeting, Gates says that he was struck by a few things. First, Buffett "asked good questions and told educational stories." Second, he'd "never met anyone who thought about business in such a clear way." Third, Buffett taught him a fun mental exercise."

What is interesting about the movie is that after Buffett and Gates were friends, they were separately asked to write down the key to being successful in business. Both of them wrote down the same answer - focus. I thought that was fascinating and absolutely true.

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About Dave Edstrom

This is Dave Edstrom's personal blog called Photons and Electrons. This is the same name of the blog I had for Sun Microsystems for many years. I am the CEO/CTO for Virtual Photons Electrons, LLC. More info is available at http://VirtualPhotonsElectrons.com I was the CTO for MEMEX for almost three years. More information on MEMEX is at http://MemexOEE.com